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Major Updates

May142014

MATE Qualifying

We are now officialy qualified for the MATE Competition! After many days of
waterproof tests and fixes to wiring, we were able to meet the requirements for
qualifying. A video of it can be found on the
images/video page or
here.

Apr72014

Electronics mounted to plate.

We now have the electronics mounted to the plates that will go inside the
tubes. There's still more assembly to be done for the cahssis, but we are
getting closer to having a completed ROV each day.

Mar212014

Working on getting chassis fully assembled.

We've been working hard to fully assemble the ROV chassis and get all the
components attached. Right now we can attach all 6 thrusters and we have 1
electronics tube attached. We hope to finish this construction and have a
working ROV by the beginning of April.

Mar202014

New dual Temperature/Humidity sensors working.

The new combo RHT03 temperature/humidity sensors are now up and running.
We managed to get all 3 of them hooked up and running off an Arduino. They are
a little different than the analog sensors used last year as you have to wait
2 seconds between readings, but it is nice to have both humidity and
temperature on one sensor.

Some other semantics were also changed. Since an attempted read from a sensor
can fail, the Arduino will pass along known incorrect values to indicate when a
failure occurs. The GUI picks up on this and displays a message saying that a
sensor failed to read. Also we now display temperatures on the GUI in
fahrenheit rather than celsius.

Feb272014

Playing with a temperature sensor

One of the guys from controls started playing around with the temperature to
ensure it worked as expected; and to better understand the software from last
year that reads and displays temperature. The sensor tested appears to work
really well. Hopefully soon the humidity and pressure sensors will come along
so that they can be tested.

Feb252014

Testing Multiple Thrusters

Yesterday we ran some tests with multiple thrusters. It went well but some
thrusters didn't turn on, so today we plan to iron out any problems.

Also the chassis work is starting to come along. The sideplates are machined
and ready to be put together soon.

Feb42014

Machining Frame Parts

On Monday some of the team members started machining the ROV frame and
endcaps. Also an image of the final chassis design is below.

Jan162014

Machining Tubes

Some machining work was done today. The tubes for the ROV were cut so that
electronics could be housed.

Dec22013

Tested whole control sequence

Tested the entire control sequence on Sunday, from the laptop to the
Beagleboard to the Arduino using last year's code. We were able to sucessfully
control some of the thrusters from the laptop GUI. The imu for detecting the
orientation of the ROV also worked properly when connected. Next we hope to
iron out problems that we encountered with running 4 thrusters and modify the
code to handle 6.

Nov152013

Tested thrusters through Arduino

Propulsion and Controls tested running a thruster by connecting it to the
Arduino and having the Arduino control the speed.

Nov52013

Beagleboard-xM Up and Running

The Beagleboard-xM has been configured with Ubuntu and is now up and running.
Furthermore, we can now configure it by connecting it to a computer through
ethernet and connecting through ssh.

Oct252013

Thrusters Tested

We managed to test the thrusters from last year, all four of them worked. We
also tested 4 H-bridges, and one was fried. But the other 3 work, which is great.

Oct242013

Initial Chassis Design

Here is a look at our initial design for the Chassis. A larger image can be
seen here

Oct232013

Arduino and Beagleboard are in

The Arduino Mega 2560 and Beagleboard-xM came in today. Now the controls team
can start programming them!

Oct182013

Old Thrusters

Managed to salvage all four of the thrusters from last year's rover. Hopefully
we can test them next week to ensure that all of them work. If they all work,
then it means we would only have to buy 2 more which would be great.

Oct152013

Circuit Boards

Purchased the Arduino Mega 2560 and Beagleboard-xM needed for the controls,
courtesy of the CS department. Hopefully they get here soon so that we can start
programming it!